A Cotswolds Indulgence

One of the best things about self-catering holidays is that being in charge of your kitchen and menus means you can discover a whole feast of culinary delights using local organic produce. The Cotswolds is a veritable foodie nirvana. Chris Burton, the owner of the fantastic Eco Chic Cottages in Burford and Lechlade, has put together a tasty compendium of her favourite Cotswold foodie places for food and drink to eat in or carry home for dinner.

Food and its provenance have never been more topical or more relevant. So when in the Cotswolds, why wouldn’t you want to try all that the rolling green ‘Wolds’ can provide? We have a wealth of local delicacies to discover and enjoy.

Workday breakfasts don’t apply when you’re on holiday. Time is your own, and the indulgence of a cooked breakfast is a heavenly treat—all the more so if the weather is good and you can breakfast alfresco.

For example, the classic breakfast of bacon and eggs is a discovery. Try smoked bacon from the Kelmscott Country Pork company. Select your free-range eggs from our local farm where, hearteningly, the honesty-box system still prevails. 

You have a choice of quail, hen, duck and possibly goose. Widely available and from equally happy hens, Cacklebean Farm eggs. Super tasty and beautifully packaged; you’ll want to keep the box long after you’ve devoured the eggs.

A Sourdough Nation at The Hobs House Bakery

You’ll need toast with breakfast. Spread Cotswold farmhouse butter thickly on a slice of Sherston white loaf from The Hobbs House Bakery. Delicious. Are you fancying the richer flavour of a sourdough loaf? Try the Sourdough Revolution’s loaves. Their woodfired bread is found locally in shops and cafes, including Lynwood & Co cafés in Burford, Fairford and Lechlade-on-Thames. Great coffee there too.

The small towns and villages are filled with cafes and bakeries. Huffkins Cotswold Bakery and Tea Rooms is one of the oldest and can be found in Burford, Stow-on-the-Wold and Cirencester. Established in 1890, their history of local baking is best experienced through the regional speciality that is Lardy Cake. Gorgeously sticky and rich, Lardy Cake is a super-rich bread flavoured with spices, currants and sugar enriched with lard. My husband adores Lardy Cake and swears that it is almost entirely calorie-free. Ahem! But it is delicious, and you are on holiday.  

If you want to cook for yourself with produce plucked straight from the fields, head to the Daylesford Farm Shop in Kingham. Established 40 years ago and farming responsibly, the ultimate farm shop sells its own produce. As much a feast for the eyes as for the palate, the shop is beautifully housed in converted barns. Shop in their Zero Waste Pantry, which uses refillable tubs rather than single-use packaging. The items here are not only good for the planet but also good for you. Don’t miss their own range of organic milk kefir. Great dairy products don’t stop at Daylesford; back in Burford at The Cotswold Cheese Company, you’ll discover Mini Rollright, Oxford Blue, Windrush Valley goat or Cerney Ash - the Cotswolds cheeses are perfect for a picnic.

Blessed with many character pubs, the Cotswolds is home to the Hook Norton Brewery. “Hooky”, as it is known to the locals, has been brewing since 1849 and has a well-deserved reputation for cask-conditioned ales and, more recently, for ciders too. Visit the brewery near Chipping Norton, where you can buy direct from the on-site shop or take a tour.

Fear not if you’re feeling more G&T than a pint of bitter before dinner in your Cotswold holiday cottage. The Maytime Inn in Burford specialises in gin, with over one hundred options in stock behind the bar and over a dozen blends of tonic from which to choose. You may not make it back to the cottage for dinner, but don’t worry; the pub also has a pretty good menu.

It’s fun to explore the Cotswolds villages, but if a late and leisurely breakfast has consumed your day, then fear not; stop at the Burford Garden centre. Not the obvious choice, you may think, but prominent among the plants and all things horticultural is an epicurean emporium of local food and drink.

 

Recommended Places To Stay For a Foodie Holiday in The Cotswolds

The Chestnuts, A Cotswold Luxury  Eco Cottage in Burford

Eco Chic cottages are the height of luxury, two lovely eco-friendly holiday cottages in the Cotswolds beautifully furnished and with kitchens that will please chefs of all abilities. If you think eco means drab and brown – click on the cottage links to look at the photo galleries of these cottages. Prepare to be amazed!

View:

Culls Cottage

The Chestnuts

 

Is your holiday cottage up-to-date and guest-friendly?

Keeping amenities in holiday cottages in line with modern trends and expectations can be a challenge.

Sometimes it helps to step back and get an external perspective. Breezeway has published an interesting list of amenities. They've broken the lists into two categories 'The Hobbyist' and The Professional.'

The report makes for an easy and thought-provoking read if you keep in mind that no holiday home could expect to provide everything in the Professional list and expect to remain solvent.

Mowhay Barn in Padstow, North Cornwall

It contains lots of very sensible suggestions, though not all of them are expensive. We recommend you give it more than a passing glance!

The only one we would take issue with is listing 'a deck of cards' in the hobbyist section. In our experience, this means a used deck of cards. These frequently contain less than a full deck. However, a brand new pack of cards which guests can take home with them changes everything. You can buy packs of cards in bulk for about 75p per pack. Put one fully wrapped in a welcome pack. Our guests regularly report that some of their best evenings on holiday were spent playing cards with all the family. Who cares if it is raining?

A pack of cards is also one of the features on our blog Welcome Cottages: How to Create One, which contains a list of tried and tested tips to make your guests feel truly welcome as soon as they arrive.

Click here to view the full Breezeway article.

If you would like to receive a copy of the Breezeway Vacation Rental Amenities Guide: click here.

Alternatively, e-mail us at info@mfhc.co.uk and we'll send you a copy.

Feel free to share your thoughts and any additions to the list in the comments. section!

Well, everything seems to have taken off! There has been a massive surge in visitors to the site clicking through to the websites of properties advertised. During June, our traffic volumes increased by 161%. Let’s hope people can behave sensibly at home and on holiday and avoid another lockdown – local or otherwise.

I’ve been impressed by owners' commitment to revising their cleaning schedules and putting new practices in place. These will ensure holiday cottages are recognised as one of the safest kinds of holiday accommodation in the UK. If you can bear it, there is more useful COVID-19 information in this edition of The Holiday Homefront, along with much more helpful advice and information for cottage owners.

The number of people subscribing to The Holiday Homefront has just about doubled in the past four weeks, mainly through word of mouth. COVID news aside, if this is the first copy you receive, contents usually focus on the following:* News of regulations/compliance requirements affecting the holiday lettings sector.* Advice on ways to get the maximum return from your advert on MFHC. These range from updating your advert to getting featured on our blog and social media platforms.* Useful blog articles on holiday property maintenance, marketing and management published on MFHC last month or elsewhere.

 

Recent additions to the MFHC site include the following:

FREE BANNER IMAGE OPPORTUNITIES: Send us your location photos and get a link to a Banner Image

The photo above: Banner Image for the MFHC Exmoor page

Have you got a superb photo that reflects the beauty and appeal of the town, county or location of your holiday property?

Every search page on our site has a ‘Banner Image’. As well as being appealing, it can also feature a title and a link to a single property advert. It’s a great way to attract more viewings if it is linked to your cottage. 

If you’ve got one or more images that you think have a good wow factor to be used as a banner image, then email it/them to us. We may also use images on our social media platforms. When we do, we’ll always credit you with a link back to your advert. There’s no charge for this additional advertising bonus. Snap it up!!! Email them to Rick: info@mfhc.co.uk

Keep in mind:

• You must assure us that you can grant My Favourite Holiday Cottages permission to use the image.
• The image must be at least 900kb in size - but there’s no upper size limit
• Shape: Landscape (not portrait).

  

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

For food for thought this month, read these two articles

How to write a (Post-COVID) Risk Assessment for your Holiday Home.

Every holiday home should have a risk assessment. These should be reviewed and updated annually. And, of course, they help you to spot and prevent potential accidents for your guests or cleaners before they occur. In the event of an accident claim, the first thing any loss adjuster will ask for is a copy of your risk assessment with evidence that it has been updated in the past twelve months. If you don’t have one, your claim could be invalidated. To make life easier – click here to read this excellent guide from Schofields Insurance.

Ten Tips to Make Your Holiday Cottage Visitors Feel Welcome

Check out this list of excellent but commonsense tips on subliminal ways you can induce a warm glow in the hearts and minds of your guests the moment they arrive at your holiday cottage. Nothing underhand – and all tried and tested. Click here to view all ten tips.

 

HOW TO GET A BETTER RETURN ON YOUR ADVERT                                                        

Add a Cleaning Statement to your advert. Bookers are looking for evidence of good hygiene practices. Add a simple sentence referring to your statement within your advert. If you have a compliance logo, add it as an image in your photo gallery.

Keep Your Availability Calendars up to date– or add a link to your property’s calendar. If you don’t have time to update it, add the URL page link to the calendar on your website. Seeing a blank calendar is a massive turn-off! If you need advice on this – you only have to ask me!

Electric Car Chargers: We have set this up as a search category for the increasing number of eco guests using the site (We’re at the top of page one on Google for Eco Cottages. If you have installed one in your cottage, log in and tick the category box to get found in searches for this category.                               

Guest Testimonial Tip:  If you are in the fortunate position of having had guests staying at your property in 2020 before the lockdown and who gave you a glowing testimonial, add it to your advert.

Current research indicates that positive reviews (especially those that mention cleanliness) from guests who holidayed in your cottage in 2020 will knock the socks off older reviews. A special section in your Admin area allows you to upload guest testimonials. If you’ve got one or more of these – upload them to your advert as soon as possible! They will be very influential.

With most holiday properties now expecting guests in July, chase them hard for reviews and get them uploaded ASAP!

 

GUEST BLOGS DO GOOD BUSINESS

Guest blogs are an excellent way to increase visitor traffic to your adverts. A recent blog by Coley Cottages in Cumbria was viewed 4,864 times in two weeks and attracted 800+ visitors (and rising) to its adverts. Here’s the link to it: Lakes In Winter.

It will continue to attract visitors, ad infinitum. We don’t charge for guest blogs and can provide guidelines for willing authors.

We would like to hear from writers for blogs on the following themes:                    

·      Wild Swimming Locations

·      Year-round short breaks availability (not just outside the school holidays)

·      Things to do on an out-of-season break in your cottage

 

Also, please tell us the names of any of the following within easy reach of your property:

• Fabulous Farmers/local produce markets
• Brilliant Beach cafes
• Tasty Tearooms
• Marvellous and Quirky Museums
• Riverside, Estuary or Towpath Walks

When we write a blog, we include a link to your advert as the ‘Recommended Place To Stay’.

II you’d like to write a blog article for our pages, we’ll be happy to discuss suitable themes, provide guidelines and help with proofing. Click here to request further information.

NB: If you are a cottage owner, you must have an advert on My Favourite Holiday Cottages if you want your property to be included in the article.BE FEATURED ON HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNSCurrently, we focus on:

• Twitter           https://twitter.com/mfhcottages
• Facebook       https://www.facebook.com/myfavouriteholidaycottage
• Instagram       https://www.instagram.com/myfavouriteholidaycottages/
• Pinterest         https://www.pinterest.co.uk/myfavouriteholidaycottages/

Your subscription covers more than just displaying an advert. Please click on the links above to follow us on these platforms. We will follow you back. From time to time, we will share, highlight or re-tweet your own postings. Where possible, e.g. Facebook, we will tag you in our articles so that you’ll receive a notification. Please note that we can only share Social Media articles for holiday properties advertised on MFHC.

By the way... if you are adding a recent guest testimonial or two to your MFHC advert, those that are 300 characters in length or less are more likely to be featured on our Twitter Page. So, keep them brief (and frequent) if you want to be trumpeted on Twitter! We moderate all testimonials to ensure they comply with our criteria.

 

HOW TO ADVERTISE MY FAVOURITE HOLIDAY COTTAGES.

Click here to place your cottage in front of thousands of potential bookers every month. A 12-month subscription is just £125, with discounts of up to 50% for listing multiple properties.

If you’re too busy to find the time to upload an advert, let us do it for you. Our Ad-Design service will create and build your advert for you to approve for just £20 per property. This includes drafting unique content when describing your cottage.

You can display your availability calendars or online booking calendars within your advert. No ‘middleman’ commission or booking charges are applied to you or your guests once your advert is up and running. Just Pay and Display.

We understand what works in an advert and what doesn’t, so if you want a free review of your advert on MFHC at any time, contact us. We are here to help (and are famous for it).

The Professional Association of Self-Caterers (PASC) has released guidelines for using and managing swimming pools. They are necessary but mercifully, brief, so we are reprinting them here below, but if you want to find out more about the PSC and what they do, here’s the link: www.pascuk.co.uk

For pools where the swim session will be pre-booked for the use of a single household or bubble holidaying together, providing they do not use any changing rooms or shared toilets (i.e. change and shower in their accommodation), then this is permittable with additional cleaning of high touchpoints such as access doors/keypads and is identified in a COVID19 risk assessment.

Special attention must be made to maintaining the correct PH and Chlorine levels and keeping a record of this.

Welcome cottages: When guests feel well and truly welcome by a caring owner (even when that owner is not present), they are far less likely to complain about anything after that and far more likely to award 5-star reviews. Impressions gained during the first minute of arrival will make a world of difference.

None of these is a ‘trick’ or underhand tactic. They are all excellent common-sense things that help your guests feel they are about to enjoy a happy and memorable week in your property. Give them that pleasure!

By the way, a sure sign that your house isn’t properly welcoming to guests is a regular flow of minor, often inconsequential complaints): A light bulb not working, a single cobweb or dead fly on a windowsill etc. Such things are commonly used to beef up a request for a refund or bad review.

Here are our top ten tried and tested ways to make guests feel they made an intelligent choice when booking your holiday cottage.

1.   Lighting: Leave exterior lights and hall lights switched on before your arrival time. Tell guests where the main ground-floor light switches are in your advance email so they don’t end up fumbling around in darkness at any point in the first few minutes).

Not welcoming!

2.   No subliminal ‘early warning’ signs: A coffee ring on a coaster, a sticky door handle/tabletop, or a smear on a mirror means the cottage hasn’t been cleaned. Be scrupulous!

3.   A Handwritten note from the owner written on or in something nice such as a postcard. We know of some places where young children are welcome to leave a personalised special welcome message to children written in fridge magnets! (See also the bonus tip at the end).

NB: If you do leave out postcards of your cottage for guests to use, only about 3 in 10 will be posted. Put 2nd class stamps on them, and they’ll all get used!

4.   High-scoring front door: Your entrance door should unlock easily, doesn’t stick or squeak when opened and doesn’t have a sticky handle. Brass handles: polished or unpolished, send out an appropriate subliminal signal too.

5.   Garden power: No weeds, litter or cigarette buts on the garden path to the front door.

6.   A picturesque (as well as flavourful) Welcome Pack within view from the hall so that it is one of the first things they see. The best ones feature local produce. Leave the light on in the room containing it to act as a natural draw to after-dark arrivals.

Very welcoming!

7.   Correct Aromas: Ensure your hall or whichever room guests first walk into smells naturally nice. Use fragrant flowers or a suitably natural, clean-smelling, cleaning fluid fragrance. Don’t use plug-in fragrances or perfumed candles – they mean you’ve got something to hide.

8.   Fridge contents: No ‘leftovers’ but something appealing and instantly usable like a pint of milk, large (preferably local) pork pie etc.

9.   A Brand new (still wrapped) pack of playing cards: Included them within your welcome pack so that guests will know they can keep them (this really is a complaint-stopping, 5-star review trigger), and if you buy 20 at a time you can still get them online for less than around 75p per pack.

10.   Warmth: Put the heating on an hour before arrival time, especially out of peak season. Ensure the ambient temperature inside is higher than outside so guests can immediately feel the reassuring difference. NB: If it’s 80 degrees outside, ensuring the inside is cooler has the same impact. Think seasonally!

11. Bonus Tip: No ‘No’s on Arrival: While everybody has sensible rules, avoid allowing people to see or read signs that start with _nO- or Do not’ until they are properly settled in. Being told ‘don’t do this’ before you’ve had time to take your coast off creates a subliminal but strong negative vibe that influences your whole perception of the cottage and whether its guests are really truly welcome. Take a leaf out of the Coventry Cathedral ‘Welcome Notice. It’s superb! 

Why not create your own notice in a similar vein? Send it to us - we’ll publish all the best and most enjoyable examples. 

Please email them to me, Rick Bond, at info@mfhc.co.uk.